Category Archives: iPad

One of my goals for the 2015-16 school year was to research the impact of our 1:1 iPad program on 21st-century instruction. This was year 3 of 1:1 iPads in grades 7-12. It was time to see if we were making an impact. Even though 21st-century instruction is a “dated term”, it is still the term we coined in the report. Maybe technology infused pedagogy could have been a better term – but honestly, what we are really looking for is student-centered learning that is amplified using technology.

The research would include feedback from parents, students, and educators. Because our program is a 1:1 in only grades 7-12, I also needed to look at the differences of our 1:1 classrooms vs. non 1:1 classrooms. This was a change from our 2014 survey.

The first step in this process was to redesign a couple of surveys to ask questions to around these instructional practices. The parent survey had very little revisions, the student survey had a few revisions, and the teacher survey had significant revisions.

I decided to send the newly designed teacher survey to one of my favorite email groups – KIC – a technology integration group based out of the Minneapolis- for feedback. From that email, I received quite a few responses, but it was Dr. Joel VerDuin’s (@jverduin), Chief Technology Officer of Anoka-Hennepin schools, that gave me excellent advice! He suggested that I also include focus group interviews. What a brilliant idea! How to archive these interviews – why not record (with my iPad!) and include them in the report? These powerful video interviews with students, teachers, and samples of student work could further tell a story of how technology was impacting our classrooms. It goes beyond graphs and charts and makes these new learning environments visible! To deliver the report, I needed a tool that would work with text, graphs, and EMBED video – so I chose Google Slides. I altered the page setup (8.5 x 11) and begin to organize my work. If anyone needs a printed copy – a PDF can easily be downloaded and printed.

Below is the results of my research. While we have had some great success, we still have a tremendous amount of work to do. We are by no means “there” yet and will be creating new goals based on the findings of this research. Take a peek at the videos. Some teachers are at the beginning stages of new learning environments, while others have been working at it for a while. This also does not capture all of the great things our teachers are doing – just a small sample! All worthy of celebrating!

I have decided to blog about my professional growth goals and plans for the 2015-16 school year. This will be a series of posts over the next week or so. it’s important for me to be completely transparent on what I am working on and what I hope to accomplish this year. I know all of my ideas will not work. Some may fail miserably. Others will be successful! I need to have a place for my ideas and thoughts to go back to reference and reflect on. I am going to use this space as an opportunity to talk about things that work, things that do not work and professional successes and struggles. We can all certainly learn from each other! And because this blog is public there is also opportunity for others to provide me feedback. While I might be able to take all feedback into consideration – I do appreciate it – especially feedback that makes me think!

All of the items within these posts are highlighted in our district’s Technology Plan that was approved this past June (2015). While technology plans are no longer a requirement for MN Schools receiving erate – I happen to actually like our plan. It is Board approved, aligned to our strategic plan, and will assist my department on keeping focus of goals and action plans.

Below are a few more goals I will be working on this year!

Goal 2 – Create, implement and monitor a personalized model of pd that align to strategic plan and district initiatives

Goal 4 – Technology planning for new PK-2 building – Byron Primary School

Goal 5 – What do I want to be when I grow up: My own professional growth needs to be a better technology leader

Goal 1: Evaluate the effectiveness of technology in our schools/classrooms including 1:1 classrooms

This is year 3 of our 1:1 iPad initiative. (I am wondering when I can get rid of the words 1:1 iPad initiative? Maybe when we are full 1:1 and its just how we do business in our schools??) When we started our journey, we created a 4 year plan with dreams of considerable transformation in our classrooms. Some classrooms have really moved the needle. Our “pockets of innovation” have grown considerably. Yet these are only the classrooms I know about.

I have been evaluating my surveys. They are mediocre at best. I have some great questions while others are not so great. We all should know by now, that a shiny new tool isn’t what improves/transforms instruction. While I do have some links to pedagogy in the survey – there is GAPING holes where improvements can be made. I know changing the questions is not usually good practice, especially for longterm goals, but if I am not receiving good data – its not effective anyways.

I know more today than I did yesterday.How did I come to this conclusion? Over the last couple of years I have grown professionally in the area of understanding what good instruction looks like in the digital age. There are reasons for this:

I have a seat at the cabinet level and we have many conversations about instruction. Some discussions with the full group, others small group or 1 on 1.

I have been able to see good instruction with (and without) devices in action. I love to be invited into classrooms to observe learning and am fortunate I get an occasional invite from teachers to be witness to this!

Because this is an area I want to grow, this year I have done “walk-abouts” with principals. The dialog I have with principals afterwards is very rich in helping with understanding (more to come later)

I have done my own self-directed learning in this area too. I am reading books about it, discussing with colleagues, peers, and coaches, joining twitter chats about topics, subscribing to blogs and periscopes (my new fav) and voxer chats.

I am trying to get better at modeling what I have learned.

I try to talk/share more about learning than I do about the device or digital learning.

SO, I have some work to do and need to create a plan to rework surveys and communicate results. Of course, the input we receive from our surveys are invaluable and will help with future action plans. We need to compare where we were and where we are today with our implementation/progress. This is a difficult task because it could continue to evolve as we learn about these new environments. I do have some reservations because right now, this is still putting iPads and digital learning as “separate”. One day, I have dreams where this is not separate – instead part of our overall strategic planning surveys. But I do understand the need to provide data to show we are making progress. Below is a proposed timeline to get this goal completed with the end result being reported to school board by January board meeting

It is important that we need to continue to evaluate whether or not we are making progress towards the goals we set out to accomplish with the integration of these devices/environments- (or lets face it any transformational change we intend to make in or organizations) As I reflect on the original goals of our program, we certainly were going down the right path towards the vision of our district!

Goals from original plan in 2013

Improve the efficiency and efficacy of classroom instruction

Prepare thoughtful, collaborative, and creative students who problem solve and think critically about global issues

Utilize innovative strategies for the delivery of rigorous and relevant curricula

But we must face facts. Just putting ipads in the hands of our students will not make our goals come to life! Our original plan had a great year 1 plan. While there is always area for improvement, we did very well on the preparation of implementation. We had supports in place to continually revisit and support our teachers.

Where I fell short was continuing to make connections to this initiative with other district initiatives and state mandates. This is no easy task. I am sure there are many districts that feel “over – initiated”. Year 2 was a struggle. State mandates had taken up all district PD time. Because teachers had so much to learn about our new evaluation process I made the decision to “take a back seat” with digital learning for at least the 1st semester. Not a wise decision and now unfortunately 1:1 iPads /digital learning was viewed as “one more thing to do”. I had plenty of opportunities to intervene but I did not have the confidence I have today about the process. Why the confidence today? See I know more today than I did yesterday above.

Lesson learned.

So here it is – Year 3 and time for my wakeup call. (see graphic below) We are trying some things this year that appear to be working. (at least that is what the data is telling us). I will plan on sharing those ideas in the next post – Goal 2 – Create, implement and monitor a personalized model of pd that align to strategic plan and district initiatives

Linking my goals to national competencies and district plans. What am I missing?

Data Management – Manage the establishment and maintenance of systems and tools for gathering, mining, integrating, and reporting data in usable and meaningful ways to produce an information culture in which data management is critical to strategic planning

Strategic Planning – Have a high-level view across the school system and work with instructional and technical teams to identify steps needed to transform the technology vision into a long-range plan, complete with specific goals, objectives, and action plans.

Byron Strategic Plan: Maintain excellence in resource management

Byron Technology Plan: Harness the power of technology to support, enhance, and amplify student centered learning.

I am very excited to announce that our school board has formally approved our plan to expand our 1:1 iPad (Project Bears21) initiative to include grades 7-12 for the Fall of 2013. While 1:1’s are popping up all over the place – I feel there are 2 unique components to our plan that may differ from others and would love your feedback.

Financing 1:1.

We have decided to blend our 1:1 with several options for parents. Below are the options that parents will have. While we will have some record keeping to do (thinking of tracking through either our helpdesk system (asset management) or our SIS – Infinite Campus).

Cost of the iPad

iPad 2 – $380

Case – $40 – Case is the ruggedized Griffin Survivor Case.

Apps – $50 – The district will purchase the apps, but will be “owned” by the family.

Total cost = $470

Options for parents

Option 1 – Leasing Directly with Apple. (Grade 7-12) – In this option, the district would sign up for the lease and make payments on an annual basis. The district would require a $40 yearly insurance fee from parents ($35 for those eligible for reduced lunch, $30 for those eligible for free lunch) per student/device with a family cap of $120 per year. Parents would be responsible to pay the district for this option. At the end of the lease the district would essentially own the device but would turn the devices back to the company for a $100 trade up.

Option 2 – Invest for Learning. (Grade 7-11) – In this option the district would partner 50/50 with the parents. Parents would be required to pay the leasing company their share of the lease (could be yearly, quarterly, monthly). Total cost to parents would be approximately $121/year/device. At the end of the lease, the parent could buy out the lease (for each device) for $20. The iPad would then be owned by the parent.

Option 3 – Bring Your Own iPad2 (BYOi) (iPad2 or better). (Grades 9-12) – In this option, the parent already owns the device. The district would provide approximately $50 in apps per student. The parent must agree to enroll the device into the district’s mobile device manager (This is how we will provide the student with paid apps). The parent assumes all insurance/maintenance of the device.

Professional Development to support 1:1.

It was a plan by 1:1 plan by Northfield Public Schools (pdf) that really captured our eye. They included 4 year staff development plan based on the SAMR model of technology integration by Dr. Ruben R. Puentedura. We have adapted that idea and created our own model. While I feel we have quite a few teacher that will blow past the SAM levels of the SAMR in year 1- we need to recognize that not all our teachers are at the same skillset. This plan looks at ensuring classroom transformation in ALL classrooms within 3 years. Sometimes, you have to go slow to go fast and we do not want to leave any classroom behind!

Below is a video that highlights our plan for PD in preparation for implementation this fall. We also will be developing /providing plans for job embedded PD for the school year as well. Again, would love to hear your feedback!

Currently we have approximately 155 iPads for grade 7 students. Since we want all devices to be on the same schedule, we are going to take those ipads, as well as other “loose” ipads in our high school and expand more mobile carts for teachers in grade K-6. This is an interim plan to build the skillset and capacity within our teachers as we look to expand the 1:1 concept in the lower grade levels as well.

It is the last day of August just before the nice 3 day labor day weekend. I have a few minutes before tasks and I thought I would be a good time to reflect on my summer! (with the district) My edtech summer can basically be summed up in 3 words: Infrastructure, Devices, and Development.

Infrastructure

This was certainly a year for infrastructure upgrades! In preparation and planning for 1:1 and PLD it was apparent we needed the infrastructure to support these devices.

Internet Bandwidth – Upgraded from 45MB to 100MB pipe to the Internet. Our plans are that we may have to double every year to support online learning in our classrooms.

Access Points. We have nearly doubled our coverage in our schools and have upgraded many of our AP’s to the Cisco Aironet 3600i AP’s. More throughput and coverage for more devices at longer distances. Also will be upgradable when the new AC standard comes out!

Apple Mobile Device Manager Server – With a 1:1 7th grade program we needed to be able to control and monitor the devices remotely. Right now, I think the Apple’s server will do – but I am always looking for other alternatives. I am already planning for “what happens next year” and adding additional iPad 1:1 grade levels.

More POE switches – We needed to add Power Over Ethernet switches (1GB) in several of our buildings to support the additional APs.

Moodle Server – Our district made the jump to the latest version of Moodle. 2.3 from 1.9. The interface is different -but also much improved. We also can easily integrate cloud storage from Google Apps, Dropbox, Box.net – which will be critical for the classroom workflow when using iPads or other PLDs.

PRI Circuits. We have moved our phone system from many many spendy analog lines to 2 PRI circuits saving us thousands of dollars each year, including no more long distance bills.

Asset Management – We now have the ability to track our inventory through our helpdesk system. We started the year tracking iPads but plan on putting every device in the system and associate them with users/classrooms. No more spreadsheets – YEAH!

Devices

Even though this felt like a year for iPad deployment, we also had quite a few desktop and laptops we deployed. We still have some needs for our curricular programs to have desktops. And as of now – we also have to ensure we have spots available for testing! However, word out on the street is that our State testing program may be creating an APP for the iPad. If/When that happens, I do believe the idea of a “computer lab” will be antiquated and current replacement funding will be studies to support more 1:1.

3 Computer labs (Project Lead the Way and 2 Business Labs)

360 + iPads

Approx 12 laptops (new hires/replacement schedule)

Development

We can not forget that people need to not only need to know how to RUN the devices we have given them – but also how to effectively integrate them into their classrooms.

iPad Training for 1:1 teachers – We have several 1:1 pilots happening in our district. 1 cart in Kindergarten classroom, 1 cart in a 2nd grade classroom, 1 cart in a high school FACS classroom, and a 1:1 in 7th grade – We had Jenn Nelson of Eden Prairie come down 3 days to help faciliate training/discussions in using the iPads in a 1:1 environment. I think the toughest scenario will be utilizing the iPads in a multi-user environment (FACS) They simply are not made to be multi-user devices. At any rate – we needed to prepare our staff for these devices.

eLearning Certification – I have developed a 6 week certification program for district teachers who want to teach online or develop hybrid courses for our district. We now have a board approved process in which teachers must follow before being allowed to teach hybrid. It starts with the certification. This course is not just about how to do Moodle (even though they will learn how to do Moodle) – it is more about how to facilitate online learning – Developing quality online resources, activities, and assessments according to course objectives while building collaboration among students is the main focus of this course. They have a peer review sample ready to go upon completing the course.

Bears Professional Growth Academy – Another great academy took place this year! Attendance is between 60- 70% of Byron Teachers that VOLUNTARILY attend. Right now we have accumulated over 1300 hours of PD for our staff as well as others from other districts Check out our PGA archive!

Digital Learning Coaches – Of all the projects we have accomplished this year – I would have to say I am MOST excited about this one. We have always done a very good job preparing our teachers for technology, but not a good job helping with the implementation. This is our answer to what others call “Tech Integrationalists”. Here is the video “all call” I sent to my staff and we were fortunate to have quite a response from district teachers! We plan on utilizing the FlippedPD idea and were fortunate to have Kristin Daniels and Wayne Feller (StillWater Public Schools) to help kick off the coach training! I have some incredibly eager teachers who are very engaged on helping EVERY classroom (PK-12) effectively integrate technology to support teaching and learning! We started the school year with a visit to every school share the processin developing our own teacher Digital Learning Network. It was AWESOME and one of my PROUDEST moments for the district!

Goodby Summer!Photo Credit – Sweetbeadstudio.com

I sincerely hope all of the summer of installs and planning pay off – and this school year is one of my best….EVER~!

Today we updated our sandbox Moodle server so that I could begin testing (and training) on the new system. We will be officially transitioning our production Moodle to 2.3 this summer. This couldn’t come at a better time. As my previous post indicated, we will be piloting iPads in grade 7 and several elementary classrooms.

One of the very cool things about Moodle 2.2+ is that it integrates EASILY with Dropbox. This will assist teachers as they develop a “paperless” classroom with the iPad and Students will now be able to submit iPad created assignments to Moodle. We have discussed sharing Dropbox folders and creating write only Dropbox folders. Why is this Moodle workflow option worth considering? The answer is easy… Moodle helps with file organization of student submitted work. It also allows for a more organized way of providing private feedback to students.

Imagine – a math teacher posts a PDF of a worksheet for students to complete. Previously students would print, do, and submit via paper/pencil. Now students can download PDF, open in PaperPort notes (or any other PDF writing app), write electronically on it with the iPad, save to Dropbox, and upload to Moodle. Below is my thoughts of how this workflow would be implemented. (click image to see full size)

There is also the integration of Google Docs – however it is a little “hokey”. (Yet works – but you do not have access to your folders?) I am hopeful – HOPEFUL – that the iOS Google Drive is available by the start of school. (fingers crossed – Julyish!) I am thinking Drive may eliminate students having to create a dropbox account. Students will already have Drive accounts via our districts Google Apps for Education integration. I am also hoping with Google Drive -that the Google Docs works better. It is a bummer that docs is very basic on the iPad and does not allow for real-time collaboration. Oh – and Google Presentation isnt even an option!

Below is a screenshot from the iPad in Moodle. Students click Dropbox and easily navigate to the file (PDF, Jpg, ePub, and even Doc, PPT, XLS). Save it – and submit. It is timestamped and ready to be graded! Teachers can access via computer or iPad and then provide feedback about the assignment if appropriate. Students can easily see what they have submitted, and what they need to complete because of the timestamp. I think its a good option and we are going to GO FOR IT!